Dear Friends,
In telephone conversations I’ve had with many of you these past days, a recurring theme I’ve picked up on time and again has been the pain--the deep sadness--you are feeling at the thought of not being able to celebrate Holy Week and the Easter Triduum with the parish community in the Cathedral this year. Any way you look at it, God is asking a great deal of us, but it’s well to recall that by staying home right now, we really are serving our brothers and sisters, hard as it is to realize that sometimes. And I have to remind myself, too, that our sadness is small when compared to that of people who have been stricken by the Coronavirus and of those who are on the front lines dealing with its victims.
And we are making every effort – and exercising every bit of imagination we can muster! – to come up with ways for us to gather virtually as a community to celebrate these holiest days of the Church’s year. If we do this right -- and with your full and conscious participation, I’m convinced we will -- these will be days for us to deepen our faith and also to deepen the bonds that unite us as a community of believers. I really believe that.
Below, you will find links to the complete schedule of all the Holy Week liturgies we will be livestreaming from the Cathedral, as well as resources for praying at home as a family or as individuals.
This Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will be reminded, in the reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, to put on the mind of Jesus Christ,
“who humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Holy Week is the privileged time – the perfect time – for us to do just that. I am prayerfully hopeful that, through the wonders of modern technology, we will experience in a new and powerful way the even greater wonder of the sacred Mysteries that are at the heart of our Christian faith!
Father Ryan
